The Euclid Consortium (EC) is a large collaboration composed of people from different backgrounds and cultures. Its ability to provide excellent service to the astronomical community is enhanced by establishing an inclusive consortium culture. Embracing differences and fostering an inclusive environment creates opportunities for participation and innovation and contributes to a productive, high-achieving workforce. The Euclid Consortium is therefore adopting the following Code of Conduct to reinforce these important principles.

Inclusion and respect

All EC members should strive to treat everyone encountered in their professional life with respect, to solicit and listen to diverse opinions, and to treat such opinions with civility. They should be alert to behavior from themselves or others that would act to exclude or disregard other members in work-related activities.

Discrimination

EC members should promote equality of opportunity and treatment for all their colleagues, regardless of (alphabetically) age, disability, ethnicity, gender, marital status, nationality, physical appearance, political affiliation, pregnancy, race, religion, sexual orientation, and status as a caregiver (including as a parent).

In particular, it is required that appointments to roles within the EC be made in a manner to ensure such equality of opportunity.

Harassment and Bullying

The EC will not tolerate verbal, nonverbal, physical, or sexual harassment or bullying of any kind. Behavior and language acceptable to one person may not be to another. Unwelcome attention, threatening or abusive language, insulting, hurtful, or disrespectful comments, are strictly banned from the EC. Members must make every effort to ensure that words and actions communicate respect for others.

Members further shall not recklessly or maliciously injure, or attempt to injure, directly or indirectly, the reputation and career prospects of others.

The EC places a high priority on eliminating sexual harassment from the workplace. Sexual harassment includes (but is not limited to) sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when either: a) submission to or rejection of such advances, requests or conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of employment or a basis for employment or advancement decisions; or b) such advances, requests, or conduct have the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance by creating an intimidating, hostile, humiliating, or sexually offensive work environment.

Scientific Misconduct

All members should demonstrate personal and organizational integrity in all matters. Fabrication of data or selective reporting of data with the intent to mislead or deceive is unethical, unacceptable, and fraudulent, as is the appropriation of unpublished data or research results from others without permission and attribution. It should be recognized that honest error is an integral part of the scientific enterprise. It is not unethical to be wrong, provided that errors are promptly acknowledged and corrected when they are detected.

Resolution of Conflicts and Complaints

The Euclid Consortium Diversity Committee (ECDC) is available to provide conflict resolution, with the hope of achieving satisfactory outcomes without formal sanctions. ECDC members will undergo specific training to prepare them for this role. If it becomes apparent, at any point during the complaints process, that the complaint implies potentially criminal acts, the appropriate authorities will be notified immediately.

EC members who believe that they have been negatively impacted by a possible violation of the Code of Conduct would start the process by contacting an ECDC member, who will then alert the ECDC chair (or a substitute if the chair is conflicted). These two will communicate with the initiator, securing confidentiality, to determine the basic parameters of the complaint and to determine how the initiator would like to proceed. Should the desire be for further action, the ECDC chair will appoint a subgroup, typically 3-4 members, who will investigate further. If the initiator opts to end confidentiality, then this group is able to contact other parties, in order to gather more viewpoints and to try to help mediate an informal resolution. The ECDC will seek to handle this discretely and to limit discussion of the case to not go beyond the ECDC subgroup and the involved parties.

Should the initiator opt to pursue a formal complaint, then the ECDC chair (or their substitute, or the initiator themselves) will contact one ECB contact person. The ECB will designate three of its members to serve as such contacts, so that conflicts of interest can be avoided. The ECB contact person will then serve as chair of a group of 5 people (the Complaints Panel), selected by the ECB and including three ECB members (not necessarily the contact group) and two ECDC members (distinct from the previous ECDC subgroup), who will review the case and decide whether to investigate the issue in a discrete manner, or refer the case to an external body with jurisdiction over the accused, such as one or more of the institutions employing those involved. The full ECB and the ECDC will be informed of the formation of a Complaints Panel, but without names or details of the complaint. It is noted that anonymous complaints cannot be investigated.

Should the Complaints Panel decide to pursue an investigation, it will arrive at a decision regarding fault and the resulting sanctions to be imposed, and will inform the involved parties. It will also inform the full ECB of the existence of the case and its resolution, including, if fault was found, the name of the accused and the decision of sanctions, but without names of the initiator or any witnesses or details of the complaint.

If the Complaints Panel opts to refer the case to an external body, this referral ideally would happen before a wider set of interviews is conducted but can happen at any time. The Complaints Panel should be careful regarding the conflicts of interest that can arise when the external body has associations to the accused but not the accuser; it may determine that multiple institutions should be contacted. The Complaints Panel would inform the external bodies of the range of EC sanctions that could be applied and require that it be kept informed regarding the progress of the external process and that a decision as to sanctions be returned to the ECB in writing. While the ECB cannot hear an appeal of an investigation that it did not conduct, the referral to an external body does not prevent the ECB from re-starting its investigation of the charge.

The ECB will seek to resolve such formal complaints in a prompt manner, ideally within 2 months of the receipt of the complaint.

Should a party seek to appeal the decision of the ECB investigation, then such appeal should be made within one month of the communication of the decision. The appeal will be heard by the remaining members of the ECB, excluding those who are conflicted or recused and those who were in the original investigative group. At this point, manifestly all names and details must be revealed to the rest of the ECB, who will treat the matter confidentially.

In no circumstance does the EC Code of Conduct supplant laws or institutional policies or requirement to which members of the EC or home institutions are subject, including reporting requirements these individuals or entities may have. It is understood that EC members may report allegation of violations to home institutions, government agencies, or local authorities for investigation per applicable laws, regulations, and policies. Further, it is understood that some ECB members may opt to recuse themselves due to these external policies and laws.

It is important to protect individuals from false, unsubstantiated, or inaccurate accusations. It is a violation of the Code of Conduct to knowingly provide false information, knowingly make a false report of suspected misconduct or a subsequent false report of retaliation, or knowingly provide false answers or information in response to an ongoing investigation.

Retaliation

Retaliation toward a member who pursues any of these options, or toward anyone assisting either in the conflict resolution process or in the investigation of a formal complaint, is a violation of this Code.

Potential Sanctions

All EC members are expected to abide by this Code of Conduct, and prospective members must agree to the terms of the Code of Conduct as condition of acceptance into the EC. EC members are granted membership privileges at the discretion of the EC Board (ECB), and such privileges may be revoked upon reasonable grounds, including but not limited to violations of this Code of Conduct.

Violations of this Code of Conduct can result in a wide range of sanctions, depending on the severity, including restriction from participation in EC telecons, restriction from participation in EC meetings and workshops, suspension from EC working groups, or suspension or revocation of EC membership. Should a formal sanction be imposed, the home institution of the sanctioned person will be informed.

Acknowledgement

We thank the LSST DESC Professional Conduct Committee for sharing LSST DESC Code of Conduct, which provided a starting point for this document and from which some passages have been reused.

Licensed for re-use according to Creative Commons CC0 1.0 https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Meeting Code of Conduct

For EC meetings, the following Meeting Code of Conduct should be adopted and published on the meeting webpage.

The organizers are committed to making this meeting productive and enjoyable for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, race, nationality or religion. We will not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.

Please follow these guidelines:

Behave professionally. Harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary comments or jokes are not appropriate. Harassment includes sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, sexual attention or innuendo, deliberate intimidation, stalking, and photography or recording of an individual without consent. It also includes offensive comments related to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, race or religion.

All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual or sexist language and imagery is not appropriate.

Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other attendees.

Discretion should be used when posting any meeting pictures to social media sites, in particular to protect the privacy of individuals as part of large crowd scenes. Consent for photography may be assumed when the subject is giving a talk during an EC meeting. In addition, attendance of the meeting signifies consent for appearing in the background of photos where the individual is not the central focus of the image. Publicizing/posting photos of individuals without consent is not permitted.

Participants asked to stop any inappropriate behaviour are expected to comply immediately. Attendees violating these rules may be asked to leave the meeting at the sole discretion of the organizers. Any participant who wishes to report a violation of this policy is asked to speak, in confidence, to a member of the Euclid Consortium Diversity Committee.

The above code of conduct is based on the "London Code of Conduct", as originally designed for the conference “Accurate Astrophysics. Correct Cosmology", held in London in July 2015. The London Code was adapted with permission by Andrew Pontzen and Hiranya Peiris from a document by Software Carpentry, which itself derives from original Creative Commons documents by PyCon and Geek Feminism. It is released under a CC-Zero licence for reuse. To help track people's improvements and best practice, please retain this acknowledgement, and log your re-use or modification of this policy at https://github.com/apontzen/london_cc.